Sat, Oct 9, 2010from Washington Post: Hungary sludge reservoir at risk of collapseThe cracking wall of an industrial plant reservoir could collapse at any moment and send a new wave of caustic red sludge into towns devastated by a deluge this week, Hungary's prime minister said Saturday.
A crack in the concrete wall widened by 2.76 inches (7 centimeters) overnight, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told reporters gathered at a fire station near the alumina plant that dumped up to 184 million gallons (700,000 cubic meters) of highly polluted water and mud onto three villages in about an hour Monday, burning people and animals. At least seven people were killed and hundreds injured. ...

Sat, Oct 9, 2010from CNN: What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee deathsFew ecological disasters have been as confounding as the massive and devastating die-off of the world's honeybees. The phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- in which disoriented honeybees die far from their hives -- has kept scientists, beekeepers, and regulators desperately seeking the cause.... The long list of possible suspects has included pests, viruses, fungi, and also pesticides, particularly so-called neonicotinoids, a class of neurotoxins that kills insects by attacking their nervous systems. For years, their leading manufacturer, Bayer Crop Science, a subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG (BAYRY), has tangled with regulators and fended off lawsuits from angry beekeepers who allege that the pesticides have disoriented and ultimately killed their bees... A cheer must have gone up at Bayer on Thursday when a front-page New York Times article, under the headline "Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery," described how a newly released study pinpoints a different cause for the die-off: "a fungus tag-teaming with a virus."...What the Times article did not explore -- nor did the study disclose -- was the relationship between the study's lead author, Montana bee researcher Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, and Bayer Crop Science. ...

Neonicotinoids... Take out the "neo" and the "oids" and you have nicotin... sound familiar? The bees are dying from smoking, not pesticides.

Fri, Oct 8, 2010from Reuters: Prenatal arsenic exposure quintuples infant death riskBabies born to mothers with high levels of arsenic exposure are five times more likely to die before their first birthday than infants whose mothers had the least exposure to the toxic mineral, new research shows.
"We observed clear evidence of an association between arsenic exposure and infant mortality," Dr. Anisur Rahman of Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden and colleagues state in the November issue of Epidemiology. And the fact that death risk increased as exposure rose, they add, "is supportive of a causal relationship."... To address these issues, the researchers followed 2,924 pregnant women who provided urine samples for arsenic testing, all when they were eight weeks pregnant, and some later in pregnancy.
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Fri, Oct 8, 2010from Louisville Courier-Journal: Environmentalists claim Kentucky coal mines faked water dataRobert Kennedy Jr. and other environmentalists claim three surface coal mining operations in Eastern Kentucky falsified pollution data, failed to submit reports or exceeded permit limits on more than 20,000 occasions in the last two years. The groups have taken the first step towards filing suit under the Clean Water Act regarding operations of ICG Knott County, ICG Hazard, and Frasure Creek Mining in seven Kentucky counties: Leslie, Perry, Knott, Breathitt, Floyd, Pike and Magoffin.
The groups want the companies to be fined as much as $740 million and criminal prosecution of anyone who might have falsified the reports. International Coal Group called the allegations "scurrilous," while officials identified in public records as representing Frasure Creek Mining did not return phone calls. ...

Thu, Oct 7, 2010from Science News: Pesticide in womb may promote obesity, study findsOne-quarter of babies born to women who had relatively high concentrations of a DDT-breakdown product in their blood grew unusually fast for at least the first year of life, a study finds. Not only is this prevalence of accelerated growth unusually high, but it's also a worrisome trend since such rapid growth during early infancy has -- in other studies -- put children on track to become obese.
Affected babies in the new study weighed no more than normal at birth, so growth in the womb was unaffected. Their moms were also normal weight -- which is significant because babies born to overweight and obese women sometimes undergo rapid growth. ...